BASIC turns 40

BANGALORE: BASIC programming language was the results of the efforts of John Kemeny, chairman of the department of mathematics at Dartmouth, and mathematics professor Thomas Kurtz. The language completed 40 years, on 1^st of May. Said an online report.

Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC), is no more used commercially, but still remains as one of the products used by the school kids to learn programming concepts. MS bundles a version of BASIC with its Word and Excel programs and its widely popular product Visual Basic is an extension of BASIC.

Kemeny, Kurtz began thinking of creating such a language in 1963 at a time when people had to buy computer time. They created the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, one of the first time-share systems in the US; and then created BASIC so that students could write programs to run on the General Electric GE-225 mainframe that was the heart of the system.